Digital Musings

An important aspect of any blog is its design and placement of elements. Good content and bad design don’t go well together and also vice versa. At times some elements need to be adjusted to fit in a widget that you like or design needs to be tweaked, may be a request for a specific size of an advertisement.

But every time this change is made we need to make sure that the blog or the website is being rendered properly on various browsers used on the Internet. May it be Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari or the Konqueror used in Linux. When we think about checking this, every user has some limitations. For example, I use a Windows PC and do not have access to a Apple PC with Mac OS which uses Safari, neither have access to Linux that uses Konqueror as the default browser. I would never know how my website looks in those browsers and if I can make any change that would make my Blog look better in those browsers too.

Well, here Browsershots.com helps us out!

What is Browsershots?

Browsershots makes Screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make Screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

Its a wonderful service. It gives you a chance to look at your blog the way it would on various browsers on different Operating systems. Its Open Source and is constantly improving.

I for one have never got a chance to work on a Linux computer, lest work on the Konqueror browser. However there are about 10-15 visitors everyday who use a Linux machine. I need to know if they see my blog the way I intended. Same is the case with MAC OS. With this service I am now able to see how my blog looks on these two Operating Systems on Safari and Konqueror.

Below are the Screenshots from Safari 2.0 and Konqueror 3.5 for Digital-Musings.com

Also the primary aspect of rendering of the blog is taken care of. After looking at 13 screen shots of my blog on 3 Operating systems on browsers like Firefox( Versions 1.5,2.0) , Internet Explorer ( Versions6,7) , Opera (9.23, 9.24) , Safari( 2.0 ,3.0) and Konqueror 3.5, I came to know that the Side Bar in my blog break only for one Browser, i.e Internet Explorer 6.0. Except that in every Browser things are looking great. So after this analysis, you know your website is rendering properly for 12 out of 13 browsers, and the only one that isnt working is IE 6.0, which isnt used much nowadays. This is pretty good.

In this way your design is now tested in almost every browser used by your visitors, and you know the Blog is being rendered properly. Any new changes can be checked as and when required and we have an idea how is it functioning on various browsers.

Highly recommended because of the ease of use and application it has, especially if you have recently changed or modified your Blog design !

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